16/05 - CANNES DAILY ON DON'T LOOK BACK

ENTERTAINMENT / CANNES FILM FESTIVAL / CANNES DAILY / 16/05 - CANNES DAILY ON DON'T LOOK BACK

16 May 2009 — A beach in Cannes on a placid May evening in 2009 is about as far as you can get from Birmingham, Alabama in the spring of 1963. But there we were, at tonight's Cannes premiere of Soundtrack For a Revolution at the Cinéma de la Plage, watching documentary footage of Martin Luther King's campaign to end racial segregation in Birmingham. Scenes showing the brutality of the Birmingham police, intensifying in reaction to the deliberate non-violent stance of King's protesters, are chilling even if you're watching them from a beach chair, even if you've seen them countless times before — children fleeing the fury of water cannons, bystanders mauled by attack dogs. The surprise of Soundtrack For a Revolution is its soundtrack. Directors Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman got The Roots, Joss Stone, Wyclef Jean, Mary Mary and other current acts to sing the "freedom songs" that provided the inspiration and accompaniment for the American Civil Rights movement. "We Shall Overcome" may have sounded bittersweet, even bitter, at various times over the past 46 years, but today those gospel lyrics seem to carry a new note of optimism. King's letter from Birmingham Jail ("Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere") is a literary classic. Barack Obama is president of the United States. Those are reasons for singing.* * *Where were you last night, around midnight? We were trying to tell the difference between Sophie Marceau and Monica Bellucci. In a French movie called Ne te retourne pas (Don't Look Back), which premiered tonight at the Cannes festival, both actresses play the same woman and it's not easy to know which is which (or to follow the plot if you're attending a late-night screening and didn't get much sleep the night before). So when the pair turned up on the red carpet, wearing matching red dresses and diamonds, we paid careful attention. From where we were sitting, yes, Sophie Marceau and Monica Bellucci seemed to be two different people. Monica Bellucci's dress was a slightly darker shade of red and her smile was less toothy than Sophie Marceau's. But when we ran into Monica Bellucci again at the party after the movie premiere, we began to have our doubts. We were no longer sure of the exact colour of her dress. We may have underestimated special-effects technology. We felt uneasy. The room started to spin. We looked in a mirror and...Sophie Marceau was staring back at us. She asked if we might like another cocktail but we decided it was time to sleep. — Randall KoralThis year NESPRESSO has Cannes covered, inside and out. Vincent Maraval gives us his take on the films his company, Wild Bunch, is screening during the festival ("Un Autre Regard," exclusively on NESPRESSO's website, daily at 6 p.m.). And Randall Koral, NESPRESSO's Cannes correspondent, serves up his impressions of the films and festivities as they happen ("Cannes Daily", 11 a.m. CET).